Decoding Diamonds: A Guide to Recruiting Gems and Avoiding Busts in College Football 25 Dynasty Mode

After more than a decade-long hiatus, college football video games are back with EA Sports College Football 25. For longtime fans of what was formerly NCAA Football, Dynasty mode is likely where you’ll spend a majority of your time. Dynasty mode in College Football 25 brings back the spirit of NCAA 14 but introduces unique features. Recruiting is arguably the most significant part of Dynasty mode in College Football 25, and understanding the gem and bust system, indicated by green and red diamonds, is crucial for success.

The Significance of Recruiting in Dynasty Mode

Outside of playing (or simming) games, recruiting will take up a majority of your time in Dynasty. It's where you compete with other college football programs to convince the best high school and transfer talent in the country to come to your university.

Understanding the Gem and Bust System

Every season in Dynasty mode, users are tasked with recruiting incoming freshmen. If utilized correctly, you can bring the best players into your roster and avoid those who won’t perform as expected.

Red Diamonds: Identifying Potential Busts

When you start working on recruiting in College Football 25 Dynasty Mode, eventually some fully scouted players will begin to show a few icons that players might not immediately recognize. Most notably, the red and green diamonds can appear after you've scouted a prospect. Red diamonds indicate a bust in College Football 25 Dynasty, and green diamonds signify a gem. If you get a red diamond which appears cracked, it means that College Football 25 prospect is likely to be a bust. Your scout has discovered they're likely overrated on their star rating and may not be quite as valuable to your team as you initially believed. For example, if a bust is a four-star prospect, they are a three-star level talent. Red Diamonds are specifically worth keeping an eye out for when it comes to the highest-rated recruits in College Football 25.

Green Diamonds: Unearthing Hidden Gems

On the opposite side of that though, if you fully scout a prospect and discover a green diamond it means they're a hidden gem. That player is likely even better than initially believed and could improve to a standout starter once they're on your squad. Meanwhile, a four-star gem is a five-star recruit.

Read also: Recruiting Gems in NCAA 25

Star Ratings: The Baseline

A player’s star rating is accurate if they don’t have either icon.

Scouting: Unveiling the Truth

To discover if a player is a bust or gem, players must complete 100% of scouting on a prospect. To do this, you spend hours uncovering a prospect’s top attributes. When you do find a player that you want to target, you’ll be able to navigate to their profile and scout them to learn more about their makeup. For the most part, scouting will just give you greater insight into the strengths and weaknesses that each player might have. Occasionally, though, upon fully scouting a player, you’ll be greeted by a large red or Green Diamond.

Strategic Implications of Diamonds

Even if a recruit is a bust, that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth signing. A five star talent bust being a four star talent is still a great player to have in most college football programs, and four star busts can also contribute. If you coach a smaller program, gems are a great way to swoop up top-level talent that may have slipped through the cracks. And some gems end up not actually being that valuable if their development trait is slower than other recruits. Every program is different and will change how you approach utilizing this system.

Other Icons

The main other icon you may notice is the handshake icon with a crossed out symbol through it, and this is about their dealbreaker.

Coaching Carousel and Building Your Program

As the old saying goes, “to win in College Football it’s not the X’s and the O’s, it’s the Jimmy’s and the Joe’s”. Recruiting is the lifeblood of College Football and having a consistent winner means you need a roster that is built to reload rather than rebuild. Your journey to the top of the college football world starts with your coach. We wanted this to be meaningful and allow you to experience the coaching journey that no other sport can provide. We met with college football coaches and experts and started breaking down real life coaches on the whiteboard. What was their identity? What made them great? What we found was that both current and former coaches broadly fit into three main categories. There were also a number of coaches who were more of a hybrid between two categories. For example, there were coaches who were great at both recruiting and X’s and O’s. What about the greatest coaches of all time? Even they weren’t great at everything and needed their coordinators. Let’s look back to 2013. Alabama’s offense had fallen behind. The world of college football offenses was changing and it was changing quickly.

Building Your Coach: Archetypes and Abilities

Your journey to the top of the college football world starts with your coach. We wanted this to be meaningful and allow you to experience the coaching journey that no other sport can provide. Progressing your coach starts with playing games. As you play, you will complete coach goals that award XP. Once you earn enough XP, you will level up your coach (to a maximum of level 50) and be awarded Coach Points.

In EA SPORTS College Football 25, we are introducing a new archetype based coach abilities system. You can think of this similar to your traditional RPG classes where all of your party members have a specific class (archetype) and role. Our system is no different. All coaches will start with a base class or coach archetype, which can be thought of as your special ability in a traditional RPG. From your base archetype, you can progress in multiple ways. You can become an expert in a single category like recruiting where you become an Elite Recruiter and excel on the recruiting trail. Alternatively, you can become a hybrid coach who is strong in multiple areas. For example, a Talent Developer who is great at both talent acquisition (Recruiting) and player development (Motivation). Achieving an elite archetype like Program Builder or CEO is a combination of on-field success and ability progression. There is no single formula to reach these statuses. In total, there are 11 different archetypes each with their own focuses and perks. Together, they form a rock, paper, and scissors relationship where there is no dominant archetype. While there is no doubt that talent acquisition is the most important thing in college football, focusing solely on recruiting could leave you vulnerable in other areas. Remember, no coach can be great at everything. Every decision you make on your coaching journey matters. Each archetype has a set of prerequisites and objectives that must be completed in order to purchase them. For example, in order to become an Elite Recruiter, you must spend 50 Coach Points in the Recruiter archetype and sign two top five recruiting classes. Once these goals are complete, the archetype becomes available for purchase with coach points.

When creating your coach, you will select which base archetype you want to start with. Purchasing an archetype with coach points unlocks new sets of abilities, as well as new opportunities in the coaching carousel (more on that later). Additionally, each archetype has a perk when it is active. Your active archetype is automatically determined. If you own the Program Builder or CEO archetypes, they will always be your active archetype regardless of how many coach points you’ve spent in other archetypes. If you do not own these archetypes, your active archetype is the archetype you have spent the most coach points in. Your progress can be viewed in the Coach Abilities screen, which is accessible from the Coach tab of the Dynasty Hub. Within the screen, you can see all of the available archetypes, their unlock requirements and perks, and your overall progression in each archetype. Once you own an archetype, you can purchase the abilities within it using coach points. In College Football 25, we are introducing more than 50 coach abilities. Each ability can have up to four tiers and every tier has a purchase cost associated with it. Every archetype, with the exception of Scheme Guru, Program Builder, and CEO, has their abilities broken down by position group. No longer is a coach great at recruiting across the board. Now, coaches will specialize in specific position groups - making your staff composition that much more important. Are you a quarterback whisperer? Are you great in the trenches and committed to the no fly zone? In addition to position based boosts, there are also coach abilities with core gameplay effects so you can really cook. For example, the Scheme Guru archetype focuses on your gameplay style. You can also make your team a well oiled machine who doesn’t work against themselves and is unfazed by rowdy homefield crowds by upgrading the Discipline/Communication ability. Of course, balance is critically important here so there are defensive counters to ALL of the offensive play style abilities. Is your defense looking a little sus or are you tired of getting punched in the mouth by a physical ground and pound team? The Program Builder and CEO archetypes are different in that they are only available to head coaches. Both coordinators and head coaches have the same set of abilities and archetypes available to them leading to a natural progression from coordinator to head coach and increased importance on staff management where your coordinators either compliment your strengths or shore up your deficiencies. All of the abilities your coaching staff own stack together, increasing the effect of an ability. Abilities owned by the head coach have the greatest impact. The impact of coordinator owned abilities depends on whether or not the ability is related to their side of the ball. Your coordinators will automatically progress their archetypes and abilities. You will not be able to control which abilities they purchase nor will you be able to re-spec your coordinator’s abilities. You can view the abilities your coordinators own from within the Coach Abilities screen by tabbing left and right with LB/RB or L1/R1. Each coach will have a unique spider graph based on the abilities and archetypes they own.

Managing Your Career and the Coaching Carousel

Your journey starts when you sign your first coach contract. When creating your Dynasty, you will have the option to select whether you want to be a head coach, offensive coordinator, or defensive coordinator. Coordinators have performance expectations just like a head coach. Every time you start a new coaching job, you’ll be asked to sign a contract with that school. The contract will have a set contract length and performance expectations. School expectations are determined by the school’s current team prestige and program standing. The better the school, the higher the expectations. Your job security will fluctuate throughout the season based on the results of your games and whether or not you are trending towards meeting your contract expectations. The further you are from meeting your expectations, the bigger your job security will be hit. If your job security gets too low, you will end up on the hot seat and if your seat gets too hot, you’ll be fired and have to look for a new job in the coaching carousel. Alternatively, meeting or exceeding your goal will result in increased job security. Job security is a function of your ability to meet your contract expectations. Every win and loss counts towards that expectation. With that being said, not all wins and losses are created equal. Beating a higher ranked team will have a larger impact than beating one of the generic FCS teams. All coaches also have a coach prestige letter grade that ranges from A+ to F. Coach prestige is reflective of your ability to meet contract expectations, adjusted for the school and role that you have. At the end of your contract, the school will evaluate whether or not they want to extend your contract based on your performance. If you are offered an extension, you will be notified that the school has decided to extend your contract and it will be automatically accepted. Don’t worry, automatic acceptance of contract extensions does not mean that you are unable to change jobs. You can leave for a new job via the coaching carousel at any point in your contract, regardless of your current contract status. Your current coach contract and job security status can be accessed from the Coach tab of the Dynasty Hub. When viewing your contract, you can see your current and past season job security, contract expectation, and your school’s season by season results for the last 20 years. When signing your contract, you’ll have the opportunity to look at the last 20 years and see the kind of program you are taking over. Following the 2021-2022 college football regular season, two high profile schools in LSU and USC were looking for new coaches. Both schools did what nobody saw coming and hired elite coaches from other high profile schools.

In College Football 25, we set out to recreate the chaos that is the college football coaching carousel, along with the domino effect it brings. Now, instead of happening over a single week, the coaching carousel takes place over the course of five weeks from conference championship week to the end of bowl season, just like the real world. Additionally, the carousel is now an asynchronous experience where each user can evaluate their offers without the need to wait on someone else. The carousel kicks off during Conference Championship week. During this week, all coach contracts are processed and schools determine if they want to fire, extend, or let a coach’s contract expire. If your school has decided to fire or extend you, you’ll receive an action item notifying you of the news. Once you advance the week and arrive in bowl season, the first round of job offers go out. If you received any job offers, you will be notified via an action item titled “View Job Offers”. If you did not receive any offers, you will have a generic action item titled “Coach Carousel”. Just because you didn’t receive any offers in the first week of bowl season or if you didn’t like the offers you received, doesn’t mean your carousel experience is over. Remember, the coach carousel takes place over the course of multiple weeks. The first week of bowl season is just the beginning. When viewing a job offer, you will see the school’s new coach preferences, what happened to their previous coach, and who the top candidates are for the job. You will also see the contract they are offering you and what the contract expectations are. Once you accept an offer, you will stay with your current school until after the National Championship game, which is when all job changes are processed. There will be a countdown in the top right corner of the Dynasty Hub informing you how many weeks are remaining until you change jobs. If you accept a head coach position, you will be able to manage your staff and hire coordinators at your new school during the rest of the carousel period. Each school has a school persona, which determines what they are looking for in their next coach.

Read also: A Guide to USF Scholarships

School Persona

Each school has a school persona, which determines what they are looking for in their next coach.

Level: The higher a coach’s level, the more powerful they are and the more abilities they have.
Archetype: Schools have a preference on the type of coach they are looking to hire.
Pipeline: All coaches have a primary pipeline, which provides a boost in recruiting. This is meant to simulate an area of the country where they have strong ties and relationships in recruiting.
Coach Prestige: A coach’s prestige is compared against the school's team prestige. Together, these form an overall “school fit” score, which is then used to generate a list of candidates for the job.

It is important to keep in mind the domino effect when you are evaluating whether or not to accept an offer. Just because a job isn’t open today, doesn’t mean it won’t be available next week. You can view all of the current job openings by using the “All Openings” filter in the coach carousel screen. Every open job will list out the top candidates the school is targeting. Once the week is advanced, one of these three candidates will leave their current job and accept the open job. You can also view all of the coach movements across the college football world in the Staff Moves screen. The Staff Moves screen can be accessed via the “Staff Moves” action item in the Dynasty Hub.

Managing Your Staff

As a head coach, you will now have the opportunity to manage your staff and hire/fire your coordinators. Remember, our Coach Archetype system does not allow you to be great at everything, making who you surround yourself with that much more important. Managing your staff starts during conference championship week. During this week, you will be able to fire your coordinators. Be careful because this is the only week you can do this. Your coordinators will not leave unless you fire them or they are hired by another school. Every coordinator has a standard 2 year contract. Once their contract expires, it will be automatically renewed for another 2 years. Of course, if you don’t like them, you can always tell them they’re fired. If your coordinator has one year or less remaining on their current contract, there is a chance they will be poached and leave for another school. Starting Bowl Week 1, you can hire new coordinators if you have an open position. When you go to hire a new coordinator, you will be presented with…

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